After an over forty-year journey from its infancy to a widely accepted business/application model, the TCP/IP based Internet has become a universal communication platform. Internet technologies have successfully transformed legacy end-to-end communication systems from a circuit-to-circuit model (i.e., circuit switching) to a host-to-host model (i.e., packet switching). Recently, however, the industry is gaining momentum to transfer next generation Internet technology from connectivity-based networking to content-based networking. Content-centric networking is designed and optimized for the content itself, and aims to be highly distributed and collaborative to fill the growing demand for networks that support personalization and social media.
Internet protocol (IP) routing is designed for host-to-host conversation, but today most Internet traffic is used for content dissemination. As the demand for content, such as streaming video, increases, using traditional IP routing becomes more challenging. For example, a small percentage of content may account for a large percentage of total network traffic. Current Internet IP routing designs, however, have not been optimized for this skew distribution resulting in over-subscription between Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) and Ethernet switchers, between Ethernet switchers and Broadband Remote Access Servers (BRAS), and between BRAS to edge routers. Over-subscription occurs, for example, when IP routing only provides a “pipe” transmission without regard to the characteristics of the content being carried. Therefore, IP routing has difficulty optimizing content traffic dissemination over underlying link layer network resources such as bandwidth and topology.
What are needed are efficient systems and methods of content distribution having high availability, high reliability, low latency, and ubiquitous mobility.